5 Tips for Mastering Adobe Photoshop Elements 10

Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 10 has arrived, and whether you’re an experienced Elements user or someone who’s considering making the leap for the first time, the software boasts phenomenal, easy-to-use tools that’ll help amateur photographers take their images to another level. Here are a few new Elements 10 tips for old users followed by a couple old tricks for those who are completely new to the Elements platform.

1. Adding Depth of Field

For whatever you may lack in knowledge and savvy on the front end of shooting, Elements 10’s new super-slick “Guided Edit” options -- the Orton effect, Picture Stack effect, and Depth of Field effect -- will help you bridge the gap in post production.

An alpine ski racer cuts through a storm at NCAA Championships.

For example, I like to shoot sports, and Depth of Field effects can be awesome for people in motion. From the Edit tab, I chose Guided, scrolled down to Lens Effects, and selected Depth of Field. I then chose between preset and customizable options. Opting to take control myself, I employed the quick selection tool to highlight an alpine ski racer at the NCAA Skiing Championships and then blurred the background to create the desired outcome -- a racer flying down the mountain with the snowy world behind blurred.

With the Depth of Field effect, the racer is so fast the background is a blur.

2. Paint Effects on to Specific Photo Areas

Elements 10 also has an awesome little feature that allows aspiring photogs to paint effects on to specific photo areas -- an achievable feat with the old Elements, but a lot less cumbersome in Elements 10. This allows you to augment or enhance images with interesting preset patterns and colors so that you can really make ‘em pop.

When I snapped a photo of fans at a Seattle Sounders FC game, for example, I loved how my green-clad subjects had their green soccer scarves thrust into the air, but I didn’t love that they were also positioned against a green pitch in the background.

Sounders FC fans washed out against the green background pitch.

I hit the Smart Brush icon from my toolbox, selected the green pitch areas I wanted to transform, chose my preferred texture (Blue Filter) from a pull-down menu, et voila, in about three seconds the green pitch had metamorphosed into a gray-black background and my green-laden subjects are suddenly much more prominent. Also note that, for tighter areas requiring the paint on effect, there are add and subtract brushes tucked into the upper left hand side of you photo.

With the super-fast and easy Elements 10 paint on effect, my green subjects are now much more prominent.

In case you missed our sneak peak, Elements 10 also boasts incredible new and improved “Text On” tools that allow editors to hurl text onto images in just about every conceivable fashion -- and it couldn’t be any easier. Pick a shape and position it however you want, then wrap text around it in seconds. Even better, you can also choose the “Text On A Path” option to create your own lines and shapes on which to place your text.

Placing text on my customized line.

A poster for the Emerald City soccer supporters.

3. Don't Fear the Eyedropper Tool

For folks who are completely new to the Elements platform, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with is the ever-revered Eyedropper tool from the tool bar, which allows you to simply click on a color in your image and then paint that same color onto other areas.

Say that I decide to get rid of the cable car cables that are clogging up the sky in my photo of street musicians near Pike’s Market, I can simply drag the Eyedropper tool over the sky, click, and then use a paint brush to paint the sky color over the cables. No more cables.

Cables near Pike’s Market are clogging up the sky...

...Until I paint them away using the Eyedropper tool.

4. Spot Healing

Along the lines of making things disappear from your photos, another of the most helpful tools for new Elements users is the Toolbar’s Spot Healing Brush, which can make pesky objects and people (you know, the guy who breezes into your background just as your shutter opens) disappear from your photographs in no time.

Say, for example, in this photo of an angler on California’s Hot Creek, I need or want the landscape only. I select the Spot Healing Brush, size it accordingly, and then literally paint the angler away with a few quick strokes. Amazing. And very helpful for digital photography newbies.

Using the Spot Healing Brush, an angler on California’s Hot Creek disappears

Comments

I'm using Aperture 3 and PSE 9. I was new to photography and both programs about 6 months ago. There was no real organizer in PSE 9 for the Mac so I got Aperture for organization intending to do all my editing in PSE 9. I found the editing tools in Aperture a lot easier to learn and found myself using it for all my editing too. After reading a book on PSE editing I found some things that I wanted to do but could not in Aperture so now I use both. I still use Aperture editing more than PSE but maybe that will change.

Short answer. PSE is more powerful for editing but you can learn Aperture more quickly and do a lot of nice stuff with it. Maybe as much as you will ever want to.